Morris K Udall - John Muir - David Bellamy - Dame Edna Everidge - George Carlin - Theodore Roosevelt - Carl Sagan - Karl Marx - Dick Cheney -
My friends, the vote you make in just a few moments is one you’ll have to live with and your grandchildren have to live with. There ought to be a few places left in the world the way the Almighty made them. We’ll never see a Buffalo herd again ... This is the test of conservation in your Congressional career – this will be the most important vote you will cast. Morris K Udall
The battle for conservation will go on endlessly. It is part of the universal warfare between right and wrong. Fortunately, wrong cannot last. John Muir
6What the hell has conservation done? The World Wildlife Fund must have spent several billion pounds; it hasn’t saved the panda, tiger, nothing. David Bellamy
I thought, what have I given for the conservation of energy, for example? I’ve done nothing. Nothing to conserve energy. And then it hit me. I thought there’s one thing I can do. I can have Norm taken off his life-support system. Dame Edna Everidge, An Audience with Dame Edna Everidge
Oh Beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain,
For strip-mined mountain’s majesty above the asphalt plain.
America, America, man sheds his waste on thee,
And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea. George Carlin
Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance. Theodore Roosevelt
To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed. Theodore Roosevelt
A grove of giant redwoods or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great or beautiful cathedral. The extermination of the passenger pigeon meant that mankind was just so much poorer; exactly as in the case of the destruction of the cathedral at Rheims. And to lose the chance to see frigate-birds soaring in circles above the storm, or a file of pelicans winging their way homeward across the crimson afterglow of the sunset, or a myriad terns flashing in the bright light of midday as they hover in a shifting maze above the beach – why, the loss is like the loss of a gallery of the masterpieces of the artists of old time. Theodore Roosevelt
The hole in the ozone layer is a kind of skywriting. At first it seemed to spell out our continuing complacency before a witch’s brew of deadly perils. But perhaps it really tells of a newfound talent to work together to protect the global environment. Carl Sagan, Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millenniu
The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison. Karl Marx
Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy. Dick Cheney